Martel Gordon. A Companion to Europe 1900-1945

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418 anita j. prazmowska

The Soviet Dilemma

Soviet responses to the growth of German belligerence continue to be the subject

of research, which makes it difﬁcult to evaluate whether assessments made by the

democracies on the one hand and the Nazis on the other, were correct. During the

interwar period Soviet objectives continued to be an enigma. European states dis-

trusted ofﬁcial pronouncements made by the Soviet government, most obviously

because they were never entirely convinced of their truth. The October Revolution

had given rise to a new government in Russia, one that claimed from the outset to

be based on an entirely different set of political and ethical values. Furthermore,

the desire to facilitate the spread of revolutionary ideas beyond Russian borders was

an integral element of the new political creed. Some historians have argued that,

notwithstanding the early revolutionary pronouncements, the regime had come to

appreciate the value of diplomacy from the early days of its existence.

Nevertheless,

to Britain and France, the Soviet Union remained an enigma – and one that they

continued to distrust and fear. Industrial conﬂicts and political polarization in the

immediate aftermath of the war and again during the Depression of the 1930s

focused attention on fears of a Soviet-inspired revolution. Nor was it clear whether

the Soviet government had succeeded in rebuilding its economy after the war, revolu-

tion, and the civil war. During the 1930s the Stalinist ﬁve-year plans promised

to accelerate industrial takeoff, although, because of limited contacts between the

capitalist and Soviet economies, little was known of their success. France’s aim of

establishing an eastern front against Germany was tempered by the dilemma

of whether the Soviet Union was economically and militarily of any consequence.

Polish hostility towards the Soviet Union suggested that France would have to make

a choice between the smaller east European states or drawing the Soviet Union into

closer military cooperation. Since this dilemma was insoluble, France’s policy was

inconclusive.

In 1932 the Soviet Union, anxious about Japanese belligerence and its own lack

of military preparedness, moved to consider a policy of increased cooperation with

the western democracies. In December 1933 this policy was approved by the Soviet

Politburo. Maxim Litvinov, the new commissar for foreign affairs, came to be directly

associated with that policy change. The Soviet Union joined the League of Nations

and became its most vocal supporter. Collective security was advocated as a way of

tackling the growing German threat. The Soviet Union was the main target of hostile

Nazi propaganda statements after Hitler came to power. This, combined with anxiety

about Japan, was the cause of Stalin’s change of policy. The communist parties in

Europe were instructed to abandon their previous policy of hostility to the socialist

parties and instead to seek all opportunities for political collaboration with parties

and trade unions on the basis of a common desire to combat fascism in Europe. The

Seventh Congress of the Comintern approved this line and henceforth all communist

parties were to support rearmament programs.

In spite of these gestures, cooperation between the Soviet Union and the western

democracies continued to be fraught with distrust. In spite of signing a pact with the

Soviet Union in 1935, the French did not want to open military talks. This played

into the hands of sections of the Soviet leadership that felt it worth working towards

improvement in Soviet–German relations.

This explains why Stalin was not willing

hitler and the origins of world war ii 419

to be seen supporting the republican side in the Spanish Civil War.

When the Soviet

Union was not invited to the Munich conference, that group gained the upper hand.

Litvinov’s position became weaker; although he continued as commissar for foreign

affairs until May 3, 1939, his policy of collective security was increasingly under

attack. Earlier, on March 10, Stalin made a speech to the 18th Party Congress in

which he indicated that the Soviet Union was willing to establish good relations with

any state, which wanted to do the same. Although France and Britain hesitated, Berlin

was responsive. Both sides were willing to overlook ideological differences. Stalin saw

that time could be thus gained to improve the Soviet Union’s military situation.

Ribbentrop, the main German advocate of a rapprochement with the Soviet Union,

pointed out to Hitler that it would assure Poland’s defeat. From May onwards the

Soviet Union toyed with the two options: a diplomatic front with France and Britain

against Germany, or the offer of a non-aggression pact with Germany and territorial

gains once Poland was defeated. Surprisingly, the Soviet leadership hoped that the

British and French negotiators would come round to their point of view; they did

not and, in August, the British–French–Soviet talks collapsed, ostensibly over Polish

unwillingness to allow the entry of Soviet troops. Berlin had fewer qualms and, on

August 23, Ribbentrop ﬂew to the Soviet Union to sign a non-aggression pact.

Poland’s fate was thus sealed, as the Soviet Union undertook not to view the German

attack on Poland as hostile. A secret annex to the agreement accorded the Soviet

Union the right to claim Poland’s eastern regions. Further economic and military

talks followed, giving Germany the full beneﬁt of Soviet resources.

The Outbreak of War

Since the initiative to attack Poland was Hitler’s, the important question is why did

he choose September 1939? Were domestic considerations possibly more important

than the international dimension in determining the moment when the regime risked

unleashing a world war? In spite of the strain that remilitarization had put on German

society, neither this nor anxieties about internal opposition played a major role in

Hitler’s considerations.

His conviction that London and Paris had abandoned

Poland and were unlikely to respond to German action in the east was clearly of

greater importance. Furthermore, Hitler believed that an attack on Poland would

lead to a war with Poland alone, not to a wider conﬂagration.

During the summer of 1939 Hitler had to make the decision to either proceed

with attacking Poland by the beginning of September or to abandon the plan until

late spring of 1940. In between these two dates, any military action in Poland, in

particular one of a motorized character, would be at a disadvantage because Poland

had few metallic roads: autumn rains, winter weather, and the spring thaw would

make Poland impassable. During the last week of August, Germany made an alliance

offer to Britain. At the same time, the Poles were instructed to send a negotiator to

Berlin. Neither ruse worked. The British government only brieﬂy considered the

option of negotiations as a means of resolving the growing German–Polish crisis.

Although the will to postpone war was there, the British cabinet no longer believed

that Hitler was genuine. The Poles, having witnessed the destruction of Czechoslovakia,

were not willing to accept the invitation to talks, and neither the British nor the

French pressed them to do so.

420 anita j. prazmowska

On the morning of September 1 a full-scale German aerial and land attack on

Poland started World War II. Although Italy made diplomatic attempts to prevent

the outbreak of the war, through continuing negotiations, this and initiatives taken

by a number of individuals as well as the Vatican, came to nothing. In London,

Chamberlain and his foreign secretary, Halifax, tried to deﬁne conditions on which

Britain would be willing to resume negotiations with Hitler. A decision was made to

issue an ultimatum to Hitler on September 3. When it appeared that the French

might take action earlier, the British demanded that German troops withdraw from

Poland and restore Danzig to its previous status by 11 a.m. When the Germans did

not respond, Britain found itself at war. The French followed suit a few hours later.

An air of unreality hung over both decisions. While German military action against

Poland continued relentlessly and successfully, neither of Poland’s two allies did

anything to relieve Poland. Both governments had been forced to declare war by the

logic of their own thinking. It would still be some time before they would actually

wage war. In the meantime, attempts would be made to deny Germany economic

resources needed for the continuation of war in Europe. The fate of Poland, sealed

by the entry of the Red Army, was consigned to the ﬁnal outcome of the long war.

NOTES

1 Adolf Hitler,

Mein Kampf (London: Hurst and Blackett, 1939), p. 532.

2 For an interesting debate on the way the passage of time affected scholarship on the issue

of responsibility for the outbreak of the war, see Williamson Murray, “Britain,” in The

Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues, Robert Boyce and Joseph A. Maiolo,

eds (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003), pp. 111–32. For a different view, see Richard J. Evans,

in an edition of the Journal of Contemporary History 39/2 (2004): 163–7 dedicated to

a review of recent research of the Nazi period in Germany.

3 Hitler,

Mein Kampf, p. 524.

4 See Ian Kershaw,

The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation

(London: Edward Arnold, 1985), pp. 134–60.

5 See Klaus Hildebrand,

The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich (London: B. T. Batsford,

1973), pp. 39–40.

6 Hildebrand,

Foreign Policy, p. 1.

7 See Hans-Adolf Jacobson, “The Structure of Nazi Foreign Policy 1933–1945,” in

The

Third Reich, Christian Leitz, ed. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1999), pp. 56–70.

8 See Gerhard L. Weinberg,

The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany: Starting World War II,

1937–1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), pp. 28–81.

9 See Robert J. Young,

In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning,

1933–1940 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 122–9.

10 See Anthony Kojmathy and Rebecca Stockwell,

German Minorities and the Third Reich

(New York: Holmes and Meir, 1980), pp. 30–2.

11 See D. C. Watt,

How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War,

1938–1939 (London: Heinemann, 1989).

12 See Peter Jackson, “France,” in Boyce and Maiolo,

Origins of World War Two, pp. 99–101;

Martin S. Alexander, The Republic in Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics

of French Defence, 1933–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), pp.

302–5.

13 See Weinberg,

Hitler’s Germany, pp. 503–5.

hitler and the origins of world war ii 421

14 See Hildebrand, Foreign Policy, p. 87.

15 Ibid, pp. 47–50.

16 See Piotr S. Wandycz,

The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926–1936: French–

Czechoslovak–Polish Relations from Locarno to the Remilitarization of the Rhineland

(Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 1988), pp. 422–31.

17 See Anita Prazmowska,

Britain, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939 (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 7–74.

18 Ibid, pp. 173–4.

19 The most succinct analysis of Britain’s military policies towards Europe is contained in

Michael Howard’s The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy

in the Era of Two World Wars (London: Pelican, 1974).

20 See Brian Bond,

British Military Policy between the Two World Wars (Oxford: Clarendon

Press, 1980), pp. 248–52.

21 Chamberlain’s role as the architect of the policy of appeasement has been the subject of

numerous scholarly works. One of the more interesting continues to be Ian Colvin’s The

Chamberlain Cabinet (London: Victor Gollancz, 1971). More recent works are John

Charmley, Chamberlain and the Lost Peace (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1989) and

R. A. C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the

Second World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993).

22 For a recent reassessment of debates concerning France’s appeasement policy, see Peter

Jackson, “France,” in Boyce and Maiolo, Origins of World War Two, pp. 86–110.

23 See Alexander,

Republic in Danger, pp. 207–9.

24 See Teddy J. Uldricks,

Diplomacy and Ideology: The Origins of Soviet Foreign Relations,

1917–1930 (London: Sage, 1979), pp. 27–9; Margot Light, The Soviet Theory of

International Relations (Guildford: Wheatsheaf, 1988), pp. 27–31.

25 See Sylvio Pons,

Stalin and the Inevitable War, 1936–1941 (London: Frank Cass, 2002),

pp. 17–26.

26 See Jonathan G. Haslam, “Soviet Russia and the Spanish Problem,” in Boyce and Maiolo,

Origins of World War Two, p. 75.

27 See Richard J. Overy, “Germany, ‘Domestic Crisis’ and the War in 1939,” in Leitz,

The

Third Reich, pp. 125–6.

28 See Weinberg,

Hitler’s Germany, pp. 640–6.

GUIDE TO FURTHER READING

Martin S. Alexander, The Republic in Danger: General Maurice Gamelin and the Politics of

French Defence, 1933–1940 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Detailed analy-

sis of French military politics before World War II.

Brian Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1980). One of the best monographs to explain the complexities of Britain’s military situation

during the interwar period.

Robert Boyce and Joseph A. Maiolo, eds, The Origins of World War Two: The Debate Continues

(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2003). Nineteen essayists reassess the controversies relating to the

outbreak of the war.

Jonathan Haslam, The Soviet Union and the Struggle for Collective Security in Europe, 1933–

1939 (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1984). The most thorough analysis of policy considerations

and internal conﬂicts which determined Soviet responses to the growth of German

belligerence.

Klaus Hildebrand, The Foreign Policy of the Third Reich (London: Batsford, 1973). Useful

overview of the most important debates concerning German foreign policy.

422 anita j. prazmowska

Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the

Era of Two World Wars (London: Pelican, 1974). Essays that remain the best guide to the

dilemma which bedeviled British military policy throughout the interwar period.

MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1940: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last

War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982). Study of the internal working of the

fascist regime.

Dov B. Lungu, Romania and the Great Powers, 1933–1940 (Durham NC: Duke University

Press, 1989). Only monograph that tackles the role played by Romania in the origins of the

war; well researched and detailed.

R. A. C. Parker, Chamberlain and Appeasement: British Policy and the Coming of the Second

World War (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1993). Useful summary of Chamberlain’s motives for

pursuing appeasement of Germany.

Sylvio Pons, Stalin and the Inevitable War, 1936–1941 (London: Cass, 2002). Wide-ranging

study of Soviet foreign policy based on Soviet archives.

Anita J. Prazmowska, Britain, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939 (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1987). Thorough analysis of British–Polish relations on the eve of the

war.

Anita J. Prazmowska, Eastern Europe and the Origins of the Second World War (Basingstoke:

Macmillan, 2000). Nine essays, each analyzing a different region and its response to the rise

of tension in Europe during the 1930s.

M. Salerno Reynolds, Vital Crossroads: Mediterranean Origins of the Second World War, 1935–

1940 (Ithaca NY: Cornell University Press, 2002). Addresses British and French attempts

to appease Italy when it was becoming dependent on Germany.

Piotr S. Wandycz, The Twilight of French Eastern Alliances, 1926–1936: French–Czechoslovak–

Polish Relations from Locarno to the Remilitarization of the Rhineland (Princeton NJ:

Princeton University Press, 1988). Invaluable contribution to understanding the apparent

inconsistencies in French policy towards Germany.

Donald C. Watt, How War Came: The Immediate Origins of the Second World War, 1938–1939

(London: Heinemann, 1989). Comprehensive and wide-ranging study.

Gerhard L. Weinberg, The Foreign Policy of Hitler’s Germany: Starting World War II, 1937–

1939 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980). Well-researched and detailed study of

Hitler’s policy; strong analysis of the importance of ideology and the economy on the

policies pursued by the regime.

Robert, J. Young, In Command of France: French Foreign Policy and Military Planning,

1933–1940 (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1978). Fills gaps in our understand-

ing of French military thinking before the war.

Part VI

World War II

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Grand Strategy and Summit

Diplomacy

Michael Jabara Carley

The World War II alliance of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States and the

strategies they devised to defeat Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy had their origins in

the interwar years. During the 1930s a ﬁrst grand alliance, which failed to materialize,

aimed to contain Nazi Germany or to defeat it in war if containment failed. The main

partners of this alliance should have been Britain, France, and the Soviet Union; in the

1930s the United States did not play a major role in European affairs.

The Grand Alliance that Never Was

What held the World War II alliance together was the indisputable perception of Nazi

Germany as a mortal threat to the Big Three alliance partners. During the interwar

years, however, clarity on this point was lacking. “Who is enemy no. 1?” was the

question. “Germany or the Soviet Union?” Throughout these years a debate went

on between “realists” who supported better relations with the Soviet Union and

anti-communist ideologues who opposed them. The realists looked at the Soviet

Union as a counterweight against a resurgent Germany. Anti-communists calculated

that Germany was disarmed and not dangerous, while Bolshevik Russia was a plague

house capable of spreading socialist revolution into Europe. During the 1920s anti-

communism ﬂourished: Britain broke off relations with the Soviet Union in 1927

and France nearly did so later that year. The United States only established diplomatic

relations with Moscow in 1933. Bolshevik diplomats sought better relations with the

west while Bolshevik revolutionaries meddled in revolution abroad. Both the western

powers and the Soviet Union had their realists and ideologues. By the end of the

1920s the Soviet side appeared more effective in controlling its ideologues than were

western governments in controlling theirs.

Adolf Hitler’s coming to power in January 1933 disrupted this pattern of hostility.

Realists in France, Britain, and the Soviet Union argued that Nazi Germany posed

such a threat to European security that ideological animosities must be subordinated

to the greater need of containing an aggressive, rearming German state. Hitler’s ideas

about German world power were no secret; he had written about them in his Mein

426 michael jabara carley

Kampf, a book published in the 1920s. The Soviet Union had special reason to be

concerned, for it was the principal target of German expansion. Incompetent Jewish

Bolsheviks had taken over Russia, Hitler wrote. The Slavs were an “inferior race,”

and could not manage themselves. When Bolshevik domination was ended, Russia,

as a state, would cease to exist. Then Germany would have lebensraum, lands to colo-

nize. In Moscow, German diplomats protested Nazi good intentions, but M. M.

Litvinov, commissar for foreign affairs, confronted them with Mein Kampf. Don’t

pay attention to that, the Germans replied: Hitler’s book belongs to the past. In

Berlin, Litvinov was that grand crapule “Funkelstein Litwinov,” another disgusting

Jew. The Soviet government began to call for collective security, which meant an

anti-Nazi alliance. Britain, France, and the Soviet Union would serve as the strong

nucleus; Czechoslovakia, Romania, Poland, and Yugoslavia would join a coalition

sure to be able to contain Hitler.

At ﬁrst, Litvinov received a decent reception not only in Paris and London, but

also in Washington, where Franklin D. Roosevelt had become president. Behind

Soviet–American negotiations was the threat of Japan to both Soviet and American

security.

In Paris, the French government concluded a non-aggression pact with

Moscow in November 1932. A range of politicians from the right to the communist

left supported closer Franco-Soviet relations, and between 1932 and 1934 Franco-

Soviet relations improved. Hitlerite Germany was a threat which must be contained.

In London, too, there was movement toward better Soviet relations. An Anglo-Soviet

rapprochement began in 1934, led, not by politicians, but by an inﬂuential civil

servant, Robert Vansittart, the permanent under-secretary in the foreign ofﬁce. Like

Litvinov, Vansittart saw Nazi Germany as a threat to European peace. He had no

illusions about winning over a reasonable Hitler to new European security agree-

ments. Winston Churchill, then an isolated Tory backbencher, agreed with Vansittart.

Churchill had been a “die-hard” anti-communist during the 1920s, but he muted

his anti-communism to advocate “a grand alliance” of Britain, France, and the Soviet

Union. He had not gone soft on communism, but he thought, like Litvinov, that

the only way to contain or if necessary defeat Nazi Germany in war was to create an

Anglo-Franco-Soviet alliance. For a brief time an anti-German coalition seemed a

possibility, but things went quickly wrong. First in Washington, then in Paris and

London, interest in good relations cooled. In 1934 a possible Soviet–American eco-

nomic settlement fell apart.

In May 1935 a Franco-Soviet pact of mutual assistance

was signed, but within months the French foreign minister, Pierre Laval, wanted to

wriggle out of it. Laval, a fervent anti-communist, preferred a general settlement with

Nazi Germany. Soviet ofﬁcials were dismayed by the French reversal.

In early 1936

the British government in turn cooled down ties with Moscow. The reasons were the

usual ones about communist propaganda and the threat of socialist revolution.

Obviously the proper place for an asp, a red one, was not the bosom.

By early 1936 the basis for Churchill’s grand alliance had been undermined, and

just at the wrong time. In March 1936 German troops occupied the demilitarized

Rhineland. In May a center-left coalition of radicals, socialists, and communists, the

Popular Front, won French parliamentary elections. A Jewish socialist, Léon Blum,

became premier. The British foreign ofﬁce thought France was going red. In July

civil war in Spain erupted, augmenting fears of socialist revolution in Europe. This

was grist to the mill of Nazi propagandists who played upon the fears of communism

grand strategy and summit diplomacy 427

in order to disrupt an anti-German coalition. Even Churchill was frightened by events

in Spain. The Stalinist purges, which began in August 1936, were no help either,

especially after Stalin turned on his high command the following year, executing many

respected ofﬁcers. In the west these executions mattered, for the Red Army was a

potential weapon against Nazi Germany. Soviet diplomats could see the harm done.

The purges were not the cause of worsening western–Soviet relations, but they

provided a convincing pretext for refusing intimacy with Moscow.

In London and Paris conservatives or “appeasers” thought Germany had legiti-

mate grievances which should be met. Hitler was a rational statesman, nasty at the

edges perhaps, but someone who could be brought around to new agreements once

his demands had been met. There was no need for war: advocates of rapid rearma-

ment, like Vansittart and Churchill, were exaggerating the German danger. Besides,

war could spread revolution into the middle of Europe. In 1936 the British prime

minister, Stanley Baldwin, opined that if war came, he should like to see the Bolshies

and Boches doing the ﬁghting.

At ﬁrst, Hitler had a good sense of timing. In 1938 he struck at the moment of

greatest weakness and division among the potential partners of a grand alliance. In

March 1938 he annexed Austria and in September he negotiated the dismemberment

of Czechoslovakia at Munich. These actions struck a blow against Anglo-French

security. The French ambassador in Moscow, Robert Coulondre, warned that one

more such defeat would mean the end of France, and he predicted that an alienated

Soviet Union might abandon collective security for a deal with Nazi Germany. In

Paris no one paid attention. Many French appeasers wanted to sever dangerous treaty

relations with the Soviet Union. In London Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain,

who succeeded Baldwin and was the broker of Munich, thought he had made an

important step forward in securing European peace.

The false hopes of Munich lasted only a few months. In March 1939 Hitler occu-

pied rump Czechoslovakia, and shortly thereafter he annexed Memel from Lithuania.

Poland appeared to be Hitler’s next target, and Britain and France quickly guaranteed

its security. Churchill and other British politicians called for a tripartite alliance with

the Soviet Union against Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union could mobilize 100 divi-

sions at the outset, more than the French and British armies combined on the western

front. Only the Soviet Union could anchor an eastern front and save Poland; only

an Anglo-Franco-Soviet alliance could guarantee the success of an Allied blockade

against Germany. French and British public opinion favored a grand alliance and

expected it to be concluded quickly.

In April 1939 Litvinov offered Britain and France a full-ﬂedged military alliance

against Nazi Germany. Instead of seizing the offer with both hands, foreign ofﬁce

ofﬁcials derided Litvinov and ridiculed his proposals. The French government

responded more positively, but let the British take the lead. In early May Litvinov

was sacked. A harder man was brought in to replace him. This was V. M. Molotov,

Stalin’s no. 2. Warning ﬂags went up in London and Paris that Molotov’s appoint-

ment could signal a change in Soviet policy away from collective security and toward

agreement with Nazi Germany. This is what the Germans hoped, though Molotov

assured the French and British that Soviet policy had not changed.

Litvinov’s sacking failed to arouse Chamberlain’s concern. He was a determined

anti-Bolshevik, who resisted negotiations with Moscow. With public opinion moving,